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Nyeun Chun Ti (Persuader)

Next in Lucy W.‘s neverending list is the imposing Persuader, a villain from the future. The axeman appears in Smallville, portrayed by stuntman Fraser Aitcheson. In the show, he’s a member of the Human Supremacist Movement, a xenophobic terrorist group; he comes back to the XXI Century to kill young Clark Kent, so ensuring Brainiac‘s survival and making so that he doesn’t inspire other aliens to come to Earth. Just as he’s about to kill the not-so-invincible Clark, he’s attacked and defeated by the Legion members who followed him, and sent back to his time. Despite his brief screentime, this appearance shows quite well the amount of raw power possessed by the Persuader, and especially by his unique weapon. Let’s see together who he is originally.

Nyeun Chun Ti was born in the XXX Century on an unnamed planet, characterized by a very strong gravity: as a result, all its inhabitants were remarkably strong and durable, a lot more than most of the other races. He received as family inheritance an incredible weapon of unknown origin, the Atomic Axe (even if it resembled more a halberd than a proper axe), and the legacy and name of the Persuader, a masked identity that had been feared for centuries also on other planets, like Earth, the world Nyeun’s ancestors came from. With his Atomic Axe, also the new Persuader became a criminal, an infamous thief who appeared to be pretty much unstoppable for the regular police force: his weapon could “cut” also the anti-gravity energy that allowed cops and their ships to fly, and their weapons couldn’t penetrate his tough skin. There was no law enforcer who had even the slightest chance to restrain him, thus the Persuader had the whole universe at his disposal… until a new law force emerged, the Legion of Super-Heroes. This new intergalactic police force was composed of many extraordinary individuals with astounding abilities, and even the Persuader was eventually defeated and caught by them. Under normal circumstances, he would have spent in prison a lot of time, but those were not peaceful times: the Controllers had developed a cataclysmic weapon, a Sun-Eater, a semi-sentient anomaly that destroyed stars. Unable to stop it alone, the Legion enlisted the aid of some of the galaxy’s worst and most powerful criminals, who would have assisted them in exchange of full pardon for their crimes: the mystic Emerald Empress, the man with the fatal touch Mano, the cyborg Tharok, the monstrous titan Validus… and the Persuader, of course.

The Persuader did his part, and assisted the Legion and his fellow criminals in finding a way to destroy the Sun-Eater; eventually, the threat was annihilated by one of the Legionnaires, Ferro Lad, who sacrificed himself in a kamikaze attack against the living weapon. The five criminals received full pardon as promised… but they had no intention to change life at all: together, they formed the Fatal Five, a small villainous team that became one of the gravest threats ever for the Legion of Super-Heroes. Tharok led the team, being the only one strong and smart enough to control all the others and to use each one’s skills at best. Persuader loyally followed him, and under his command he managed to conquer an entire planet from another dimension, using his Atomic Axe to open a breach between two planes of existences. When Tharok died, the Emerald Empress took the leadership, and the Persuader was the only one among the original Fatal Five who remained by her side. It was possibly during this time that he conceived a daughter with an unknown woman, someone who, one day, would have inherited both the Atomic Axe and the name Persuader after him. Along with the Empress, the Persuader recruited other three members to replace the missing ones: the fire-manipulating Flare, the acid-emitting Caress, and Mentalla, a powerful telepath who had been rejected by the Legion and looked for retribution. Many members succeeded in the group, but the Persuader always remained, proving to be irreplaceable. In one of his most ambitious plans ever, the Persuader used his Atomic Axe to cut through Hypertime, gathering from other dimensions, timelines and realities alternate versions of the Fatal Five, forming the Fatal Five-Hundred. In front of such a force, even the Legion of Super-Heroes paled in comparison, but also they had a backup in the form of the Teen Titans, another team from the past. The clash between the two coalitions would have been a showdown to be remembered for eons.

Nyeun Chun Ti is a brutal and greedy man, a natural predator who takes whatever he wants and stomps on whoever stands in his way. As the Persuader, he possesses superhuman strength and durability, and he wields the Atomic Axe, a unique weapon that follows his mental commands, and that can cut through literally anything, including energy and abstract things such gravity and magnetism. Basically a brute with an unstoppable weapon, the Persuader is nevertheless a force to be reckoned with, much more than a simple goon, not to be underestimated…